Third District Teacher Travels to Bernanke’s Town Hall Meeting in D.C.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is sending Deborah Tobin, a teacher at Henderson High School in West Chester, Pa., to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., for a “Conversation with the Chairman: A Teacher Town Hall Meeting” on Tuesday, August 7. Tobin will join other educators who will be representing Federal Reserve Banks from across the country.

Deborah Tobin

The meeting will be broadcast live over Ustream from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. In addition to talking face-to-face with educators in D.C., Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will take questions via videoconference from K-12 and post-secondary teachers of economics, personal finance, and related disciplines. The teachers will be gathered at Federal Reserve Bank offices across the country.

More than 50 teachers from the Third District will assemble at the Philadelphia Fed to watch the event. Concurrently, they are participating in a three-day financial education seminar, Making Sense of Money and Banking II, which is one of several teacher-training courses offered at the Bank annually.

“We train between 600 and 750 K-12 teachers each year to teach economics and personal finance in their own classrooms. Chairman Bernanke's willingness to spend time with teachers across the country during this town hall event underscores the importance that the Fed places on equipping teachers to be able to teach their own students how to live financially viable lives,” said Dr. Andrew Hill, economic educator advisor at the Bank.

Tobin is an alumna of several teacher-training programs offered at the Philadelphia Fed annually. She is an instructor of Keys to Financial Success, a personal financial education course for high school students designed by the Reserve Bank’s economic education staff and staff at the University of Delaware’s Center for Education and Entrepreneurship, the Delaware Bankers Association, and the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Maryland and Delaware. Tobin has also been honored with the West Chester Public Library’s 2012 Financial Literacy Hero Award, which she shares with Keystone Federal Credit Union for both the organization’s and her work in helping young people learn these valuable skills.

“Since attending my first Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia workshop in 2007, Economic Education Advisor Andrew Hill and Economic Education Specialist Todd Zartman have taught me invaluable lessons that have helped me create a course entitled Financial Fitness: A Guide to Personal Finance and have allowed me to successfully apply to the University of Delaware’s master of arts program in economics and entrepreneurship for educators,” Tobin said.

Bernanke’s town hall will be live-tweeted from the Federal Reserve Board’s feed (@federalreserve) and the Philadelphia Fed’s feed (@philadelphiafed). Please join us and use the hashtag: #FedTownHall. Following the conclusion of the meeting, an on-demand video will be posted on the Board’s website.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia helps formulate and implement monetary policy, supervises banks and bank and savings and loan holding companies, and provides financial services to depository institutions and the federal government. It is one of the 12 regional Reserve Banks that, together with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the Federal Reserve System. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank serves eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware.